Michigan basketball: takeaways from Michigan’s loss at Michigan State

This afternoon, Michigan basketball (9-6, 3-1 Big Ten) dropped its first conference game of the season at Michigan State (11-4, 3-1 Big Ten). The Wolverines managed to hang around for awhile, but ended up falling to MSU, 59-53.

Michigan basketball is still bipolar

As we have seen for years, the Wolverines are bipolar throughout the season. Although all of college basketball is hit-and-miss, Michigan seems to be especially bad at maintaining consistency throughout the long season. Michigan basketball came into this afternoon’s game with a 3-0 Big Ten record and a two-game winning streak. This streak included an 81-46 win over Maryland and a 79-69 win over Penn State — both impressive games against good teams.

Still, the Wolverines failed to come into the game prepared and dropped their first Big Ten game of the season in heart-breaking fashion.

The offense was atrocious

So far in 2023, Michigan basketball has played three games. In its first two games, the Wolverines averaged 80 points-per-game. In today’s loss at Michigan State, the offense looked sloppy and uncoordinated for most of the night. At halftime the Wolverines trailed by nine and had only scored 18 points.

In the loss, Michigan basketball shot 19/55 (34.5 percent) from the floor (3/20 from 3-point-range) and 12/16 from the stripe. The Wolverines were creating some solid shots, though hardly knocking anything down. The trip to MSU was the Wolverines’ second true road game of the season — its first was a 90-75 win at Minnesota. That being said, if Michigan cannot perform well outside of Crisler, it is going to be a long season.

This might not be a tournament team

The loss sends Michigan down to 9-6 overall, meaning U-M needs some solid wins the rest of the way to make the tournament. Not only is Michigan’s record subpar, but the Wolverines also have a Quad 4 loss (at home) on their resume. Michigan fell to Central Michigan 63-61 at the Crisler Center just a couple of weeks ago.

Today felt like a must-win game for Michigan basketball, and going forward, the Wolverines will need a lot of big wins to boost its resume. Last year we saw a 17-14 Michigan team make a run to the Sweet 16, but that team had a solid resume when it comes to the win column. The Wolverines must now travel to Iowa before returning home to face a solid Northwestern team. The schedule doesn’t get any easier from here, so Michigan needs to get itself together and start a huge winning streak.

*Stats: ESPN